


Morning in the Burned House

by ladygrey3



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Child Soldiers, Difficult Relationships, Emotions, F/F, lesbians with swords, war zone conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 07:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygrey3/pseuds/ladygrey3
Summary: It's coincidence, meeting her here. Apparently. Adora isn’t sure that she really believes in coincidence anymore.





	Morning in the Burned House

“The dress looks nice,” Catra says.   
On the horizon, something explodes; a flower of yellow fire opens across the sky. Adora jerks slightly and looks back at Catra, whose left wrist is tied to an to an iron bedframe, and who is somehow managing to make it look like it was her idea.   
“What?” she says. She’s certain that she heard it wrong. There’s too much happening right now. Not even the liquid serenity of She-Ra is enough to make it all cohesive. Besides, Catra doesn’t just say things like that.   
“You know.” Catra shrugs with one shoulder, the other one currently attached to what was once a headboard and is now an angular, blackened skeleton. There’s a smudge of ash covering half her face, like a bruise, or a shadow; it makes her look strangely blurry. “The new getup. The dress and the cape, and the little tiara. Looks nice on you.”   
“Oh,” Adora says, and then gets stuck there. Apparently this is really happening. “Thank you,” she manages finally, which seems safe enough. If you’re a mythical hero, you should say thanks when people say nice things about you, even if those people are kind-of sort-of trying to kill you. Right? That seems like the sort of thing She-Ra is supposed to do.   
Catra grins at this, and it’s the same grin as it always was, big and sly and a little dirty, like an invitation into a joke that somehow involves every other person and thing in the world besides the two of them. It’s as familiar to Adora as her own face, and it hits her like a blow in the stomach. “I always looked terrible in the uniform anyway,” she says, and then wonders why the hell she said that.  
Catra rolls her head back and stares up at the roof of the house. It has a gaping hole in it which is about her size, and comes from when Adora threw her through it ten minutes ago. Adora bites the inside of her cheek, tastes blood, or whatever blood-like thing She-Ra has instead. This is the sort of comment that might be liable to send Catra spiraling into total fury. Making jokes about how she left her. Was it a joke? Did she mean it to be?   
“So you ditched us because you objected to the color palette,” Catra says. She doesn’t sound angry. Her voice is light. “I’ll be sure to let Shadow Weaver know. She’ll love that.”   
Even the thought of Catra saying something like that to Shadow Weaver is horrifying enough that Adora momentarily loses the ability to respond, and then remembers that she shouldn’t be responding anyway. Responding is dangerous. She tightens her mouth and turns her gaze towards the door, staring resolutely out into the smoking remains of the village.   
It had just been coincidence this time, apparently. Adora on her way to recruit another member for the alliance, and Catra, seemingly by chance, in the middle of trampling some defenseless town with giant robots. Adora can’t remember who started the burning; in honesty it could have been either of them. But the civilians are gone, at least. She made sure of that before turning to the task at hand. Catra is savage in a fight, but it turns out that if you throw her through the roof of a building, she gets knocked out just like everyone else.  
Outside, she can dimly hear shouts amid the chaos. Glimmer and Bow are still out there, fighting. By all rights, she should be there too. But she can’t leave Catra alone. She knows that much by now. Catra is a threat under any circumstances, but Catra with no one watching her is dangerous in a way that makes Adora distinctly uneasy.   
Coincidence, meeting her here. Apparently. Adora isn’t sure that she really believes in coincidence anymore.   
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Catra says.   
Adora blinks, looking away from the door. “What?”  
“Looking like that. It’s a different way to live, being—a million feet tall, with all the hair. No one’s going to look at you and think, oh, that’s a totally normal girl who just happens to really like swords. Everyone knows you’re not like other people.” Catra shifts. She looks uncomfortable, which Adora doesn’t really understand; she was, after all, the one who raised this particular subject. “I mean, you were pretty and all before, but now you—it’s just different, walking around looking like that.”  
“I still look like I used to, most of the time,” Adora replies uncertainly. “That’s still me.”  
“Yeah. You get to turn it on and off. Which I bet is very convenient for you.”  
Catra is smiling, but it is terrible and flat. She picks at her wrist with one of her long, ragged claws, bringing a line of inflamed red to the surface of the skin. Adora experiences a sharp wave of understanding, one of those moments where all the puzzle pieces of Catra snap together into a recognizable figure. Her heart curls painfully inward, like a fist.   
“Is that what it was like for you?” she asks.   
Catra’s mismatched eyes leap up to Adora’s face, one bright gold and the other the rich blue of lapis lazuli. They’re so familiar to Adora that sometimes she forgets what they look like to everyone else.   
“Nah,” Catra says, after a few moments. She stretches theatrically, an elaborate show of lazy indifference. “I’m not glowing like a damn chemical spill, for one thing. And I don’t have a sword, which is just unfair if you ask me.”  
“Everyone should have one,” Adora agrees. Circumstances and all, she is experiencing a sort of slight and incoherent giddiness. This is so close to how it was before. All those warm dizzy midnights when they could say anything to each other, be anything they wanted to be.   
“I wasn’t sure you would recognize me,” she says, before she can fully think through the implications of saying it. “You know. When you saw me like this.”  
Catra snorts. “Of course I knew it was you,” she says. “I’m not totally stupid. It was pretty obvious. You looked, like, more you than you.”  
“Yeah,” Adora says. “That’s—that’s actually a really good way of putting it.”  
There are so many things she wants to say, but she can’t imagine how she would start. She wants to tell Catra about how the first transformation was almost like dying, but in a good way; how every cell in her body felt like a flower erupting in bloom. How her heart turned into a second sun, pumping white fire into all the dark places inside her. She wants to tell Catra about the moment right before the panic set in, when she looked down at her new body and thought, oh, it’s me. There I am, with a fond sense of recognition, like meeting an old friend.   
It makes a certain amount of sense, really. She remembers lying in her cot, staring at the steel wall, and thinking to herself, there’s too much of me for my body. It doesn’t fit me. I’m too big. The feeling of opening up into She-Ra was like being able to fully draw breath for the first time.   
It was funny to think that somehow Catra might have known that, all along. Adora had never talked to her about it; she had sensed that this was the sort of deeply weird topic which had a good chance of receiving nothing but ruthless mockery. But Catra had seen it anyway, or at least had seen enough of it to recognize Adora in She-Ra when she saw her for the first time. When they were little, sometimes Catra would say things like I wish I looked different or I wish I was someone else, but she would always say them with one of those sly, slippery grins, like it was an in-joke between the two of them. And as they got older she had stopped saying things like that at all.   
“You know what’s wrong with you?” Catra says. Her voice is cool and idle. “You’re enjoying this. You’re having fun.”  
“No, I’m not,” Adora says automatically, snapped out of the haze of her thoughts.   
“Yeah, you are,” Catra says. She’s still smiling that flat ugly smile, and she looks satisfied, but not happy. “I mean, maybe not right now, but in general. This whole being-a-hero thing. Being the good guy. You’re just having the time of your life.”  
“Are you serious?” Adora snaps. Her anger is sharp and painful, like a hot iron nail between her ribs. “You—this is a war. People are actually dying, and it’s horrible, and I’m not having fun. I just want it to be over.”  
“Yeah, sure, you want people to stop dying. Whatever.” Catra waves her free hand absently in the air. “But you like being like this. The Amazing She-Ra, legendary warrior. Savior of innocents. That part’s fun.”  
Adora bites the inside of her lip again. Outside the window, she can dimly hear Glimmer’s voice, shouting something desperate and indistinct. She should be out there, helping. That’s why she’s here, what she’s made for. Not this pointless, masochistic conversation with a person who she knows hates her.   
She can feel the pressure of Catra’s gaze on her face, as careful and steady as her fingertips. The only times Catra has touched her recently have left red marks, hot lines of pain, but Adora remembers how gentle her hands can be.   
“I’m happy,” she says. Her voice is even, which she knows she owes entirely to She-Ra. “My life is better. I think I like the person I am, maybe for the first time ever. So if that’s what you mean, yeah, I guess I am having fun.”  
Catra doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she says “I liked the person you were before just fine.” There is a tone in her voice which Adora does not recognize or understand.   
“I’m still me,” Adora replies. Her heartbeat is almost agonizing. “Just—like you said. More me than me.”  
Catra is silent. Adora chances a cautious glance over at her and finds her staring back. The witchy glow of the distant fires flickers across her beautiful uneven eyes. She isn’t smiling. The hilt of Adora’s sword seems to pulse in her hand, like a living thing. She becomes aware that she is no longer breathing. There is something that she wants to say, but she doesn’t know what it is, or how to say it. She’s never been good at telling the difference between those two things. She’s never really been good at saying things—important things—at all.   
Catra wants her to say something too. Adora can see it in her opaque eyes, the rigid line of her shoulders. The silence between them is hungry, waiting to be filled.   
“You could,” Adora says, and then she stops, groping helplessly for something to say next. It doesn’t matter anyway. The light in Catra’s eyes goes out, like a door slamming shut, and Adora knows that somehow she has ruined everything with only two words. A familiar vacant darkness opens in her gut. A twitch which is not quite a smile crosses Catra’s lips, and she shifts and looks away again.   
“Things don’t have to stay the same forever,” Adora blurts. It surges out of her as sharply and irresistibly as a tidal wave, and she has no idea where it came from or even what she means by it.   
Catra looks back at her, squinting. “What?”  
Adora casts about desperately for something useful to add. She doesn’t know what Catra wants, what words will make things better, but at least Catra is looking at her now. She can’t waste that.   
Every single time a problem has come up—ever since she picked up the sword for the first time—the answer has never once come to her through careful logic and strategic thinking. It always comes from somewhere beyond her mind. Somewhere in the blazing core of She-Ra and her calm, unshakeable feeling of right and wrong, steady as gravity. And how much can it hurt, to tell Catra what she wants to tell her? The worst thing it can do is make Catra angry, and Catra is already angry. Has always been, maybe.   
“You don’t have to be unhappy,” she says. “And you won’t be forever. Something will change.”  
As soon as the words are out all her confidence evaporates, and she is immediately sure that she has ruined this moment and it’s all over. But Catra doesn’t laugh or snarl or turn away. Instead she smiles slightly, and it doesn’t look angry. It is soft and faint and uncertain, like the light through the smoke.   
“Maybe,” she says. “Yeah. Maybe someday.”  
Outside, something blows up in an extravagant plume of fire. Adora and Catra both jump. A haze of smoke floats in through the busted window, and with it the faint sound of Glimmer’s voice, touched with a shrill and familiar irritation. “Adora!”  
“You should go help out Princess Sparkles,” Catra says. “Sounds like she might be a little outclassed.” The strange, fragile smile is gone, and in its place is the same sprawling grin as always, the grin that makes the whole world a bad joke.   
“Yeah, right,” Adora says. “I leave you alone for five minutes, you’ll be out of those cuffs and gone in two.”  
“Well, yeah,” Catra says. In the firelight, she looks like a silhouette, shadow fingers sliding across her skin. “Obviously. Wouldn’t your life just be so boring, otherwise?”  
Adora stares at her. Catra slouches back against the bedframe, grinning, her eyes liquid and dark. The air smells like smoke and violence. Adora tastes ash in the back of her throat, like the sting of a kiss. Outside, Glimmer’s voice rises, slightly desperate. “Adora! Where are you?”  
“Go on,” Catra says idly. “We’ll talk again soon. We always do.”  
Smoke stings in Adora’s eyes, and she blinks fiercely. Before she can think better of it, she whirls and runs to the scorched doorframe. She-Ra’s sweeping steps carry her across the blackened ground and through the ragged fan of flames in the street. They brush against her skin, and she knows they will leave marks, but she can’t feel them right now.   
She takes a moment to wonder what she thinks she’s doing and why she just left her most dangerous enemy alone and unguarded. From any strategic standpoint, she’s an idiot. The Queen will be furious.   
It doesn’t matter, She-Ra tells her, in her far clear voice. And it really doesn’t. For one thing, Catra will already be gone by now; it’s too late to regret leaving her. And, try as she might, Adora cannot imagine a version of this situation where she doesn’t leave Catra, doesn’t tacitly allow her to go. It seems almost inevitable. The story carries her forward, smooth and inexorable as the pulse of blood in her veins. Carrying them both.   
So many of the times she talks to Catra nowadays, she ends up feeling like she has lost some very important struggle, even when in every way that matters she’s won. But she doesn’t feel like that now.   
Above the smoke, the air flares purple as twilight. Adora grins. The world opens like a gift. She leaps forward into the chaos, following Glimmer’s sparks.

**Author's Note:**

> written for a friend


End file.
